A bunch of Polish retailers has listed Nvidia’s upcoming GTX 770, with a rather obscene price tag. The Asus card, product number GTX770-DC2O-2GD5, is currently priced at roughly €533 and up. We expected it to end up quite a bit cheaper, closer to the €400 mark, so the price is probably off.

The listing points to a heavily overlocked version of the GTX 680, based on a GK104-425 chip. It appears to be clocked at 1046MHz, or 1085MHz with GPU Boost. The memory is clocked at 1750MHz and it features 2GB of GDDR5. The shader count is 1536, there are 128 TMUs on board, along with 32 ROPs.

The max power consumption stands at 230W and it relies on a combination of 8-pin and 6-pin PCIe power connectors for juice.

Just as we wrote a couple of days ago, Nvidia has picked the 23rd of May as the official launch date for its new Geforce GTX 780 graphics card based on the 28nm GK110 GPU, the same one that is behind the high-end GTX Titan graphics card.

The new GK110-based Geforce GTX 780 features 2304 CUDA cores, 192 Texture Units, 48 ROPS and will work at 863MHz base and 900MHz Boost GPU clocks. The new GTX 780 graphics card will pack 3GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 6GHz and paired up with a 384-bit memory interface. It also shares the same 250W TDP as the GTX Titan.

On the GPU level, the GK110 on the GTX 780 features a total of 12 SMXs or 2 less than the GTX Titan and despite the fact that it has the same rated TDP, it should have a bit more TDP room for GPU Boost 2.0 to kick in and provide additional performance boost when needed.

The good side of the story is that it already comes with a rather impressive GTX Titan cooler that will give a lot of headache to those partners that decide to go for a custom cooling solution.

Performance wise, the GTX 780 steps in between the GTX 680/Radeon HD 7970GHz Edition and GTX Titan. It practically does not have any competition, at least not yet and can be considered as a great move from Nvidia to fill in the big gap between high-end dual-GPU solutions and GTX Titan and the GTX 680 and Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition that fill the US $450 price range. Compared to those two, the GTX 780 ends up about 20+ percent faster and packs quite a punch for buck.

With a US $649/€649 price tag, the Nvidia Geforce GTX 780 is far from cheap, but it is pretty much justified as it is still way cheaper than GTX Titan and expectedly as well as justifiably more expensive than the GTX 680 and AMD's Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition.

In any case, it will surely put a lot of pressure on AMD as currently it has no answer to the GTX 780, at least not in the near future. You can check out some of the reviews below.

Based on the GK104 Kepler GPU, the GTX 680 packs 1536 CUDA cores and works at 1006MHz base and 1058MHz Boost clocks and packs 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 6008MHz and paired up with a 256-bit memory interface.

Some of new and key features listed by EVGA for the GTX 680 Mac Edition include Nvidia GPU Boost technology, support for four concurrent displays, Nvidia SMX Engine and CUDA technology, OpenGL 3.2 (4.3 in Windows) support and Boot Camp support.

The new EVGA GTX 680 Mac Edition is currently listed but not yet available over at EVGA's store with a US $599.99 price tag which is US $100 more expensive than yours standard Geforce GTX 680.

Zotac has announced a refined and updated version of its factory-overclocked GTX 680 AMP! Edition graphics card. Apparently the new GTX 680 AMP! will be getting a new Dual Silencer cooler as well as an Assassin's Creed III game bundle.

As far as the specifications go, the refined GTX 680 AMP! still features 1536 CUDA cores, works at 1110MHz base and 1176MHz Boost GPU clocks and features 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 6608MHz and paired up with a 256-bit memory interface. According to Carsten Berger, senior director at Zotac, the refinement to the Geforce GTX 680 AMP! Edition design comes as a result of many months of engineering and imporves acoustics and cooling characteristics.

In addition to the Assassin's Creed II download voucher, which will also be available with Zotac GTX 680 2GB and GTX 680 4GB graphics cards, Zotac also bundles this card with Zotac Boost Premium free software bundle that includes Nero Kwikmedia, XBMC and Unigine Heaven DX11 benchmark.

Unfortunately, Zotac did not shed any light on the actual availability date or the precise price of the new GTX 680 AMP! Edition graphics card.

MSI's Geforce GTX 680 Lightning-L graphics card has showed up in Japan and it is possible that we will it in other markets as well.

Apparently not much has been changed compared to the original GTX 680 Lightning, as the PCB and feature set look about the same. The only thing that is different are the clocks. Set at 1019MHz and 1084MHz for base and boost GPU, they are somewhat lower. For comparison, the original GTX 680 Lightning worked at 1100MHz for base and 1176MHz for Boost GPU clock.

The new Lightning is still cooled by MSI's Twin Frozr IV GPU and it comes with 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 6008MHz. With the same feature set it is expected that this SKU will have a rather decent amount of overclocking headroom as well, depending on the GPU below the cooler, of course.

Although it has not been officially launched, we will surely keep an eye out for it in other markets as well.

EVGA’s GTX 680 Superclocked Signature 2 graphics card (we call it GTX 680 SC SIG 2) is factory overclocked, but the Signature 2 cooler is what makes this card to stand out from the pack. EVGA uses Signature 2 branding for all in-house designed coolers with two fans. Depending on the graphics card series, the Signature 2 cooler can differ in size and thus in cooling performance. Its main purpose is to ensure reduced noise and better cooling for the GPU compared to the reference coolers.

We reviewed the GTX 670 FTW Signature 2 a few days ago here, which features the same Signature 2 cooler. Additionally the GTX 670 FTW SIG 2 uses the stock GTX 680 PCB design and can be easily mistaken for the GTX 680 SC SIG 2. The picture below first shows the GTX 670 FTW Signature 2, followed by the GTX 680 SC SIG 2.

The GTX 680 comes with eight SMX units and 1536 CUDA cores, while the GTX 670 has seven SMX units and 1344 CUDA cores. Of course, additional transistors on the GTX 680 translate into more heat. Factory overclocking on the GTX 680 SC SIG 2 must be addressed with better cooling, and we hope that EVGA’s Signature 2 cooler will do job.

For the GTX 680 SC SIG 2 the GPU base clock is set at 1098MHz, while the typical GPU boost clock is 1163MHz. In comparison, the stock designed GTX 680 runs at 1006 MHz with a typical GPU boost clock of 1058MHz. The reference memory clock is 1502MHz (GDDR5 6008MHz) but the memory on GTX 670 SC SIG 2 is overclocked out of the box to 1552MHz(GDDR5 6208MHz).

EVGA GTX 680 Superclocked Signature 2 graphics card comes with a dual-fan cooler. Reference cooling employs a radial, blower style fan that pushes the air through the heatsink, dissipating heat from the GPU outside the case through slits in the bracket. The Signature 2 cooler has two 75mm axial-flow fans. So, we’re talking about an open type approach, where fans are positioned over and blow at the heatsink. This also means that hot air stays inside the case. It’s nothing that a few quality intake fans wouldn’t effectively nullify.EVGA cooler fits within the dimensions of the reference GeForce GTX 680. The card is 25,4cm long, just like the reference GTX 680 and the cooler blocks only one adjacent PCIe slot on the motherboard.The cooler features just a few screws, so taking the card apart can be done very quickly. The cooling shroud holds two fans. The mesh finish on the Signature 2’s cooler shroud looks quite attractive, but it is also a magnet for dust. It’s nothing that a quick blast of compressed air won’t sort out.

Both fans are connected via four wires and those are gathered into a single cable and routed to the PCB. The fans in question are sleeve bearing units manufactured by Power Logic, designated as PLA08015S12HH, DC 12V, max 0.35A. RPM readouts are possible, as well as manual or automatic fan control.

The nickel-plated Signature 2 cooler looks very well made and it is massive. The heatsink does not stretch through the entire length of the PCB, it consists of two sections. With a help of four thick 8mm heatpipes the heat is moved from the cooler base to auxiliary section which is made of aluminum fins soldered to the heatpipes. The base and heatpipes are made of copper, while the rest is made of aluminum.

Recently we tested the GTX 670 FTW SIG 2 which uses the same cooler where it provide good cooling. The GTX 680 SC SIG 2 uses a more demanding GPU on higher clocks and this will be a real challenge for the Signature 2 cooler.The GTX 680 SC SIG 2 sports five phases for the GPU and two for the memory, while the reference design features four phases for the GPU and two for the memory. GPU voltage regulation is taken care of by Richtek’s RT8802A controller.

EVGA’s GTX 680 SC SIG 2 packs a total of 2GB of GDDR5, in eight memory modules. EVGA overclocked the memory to 1552MHz (6208MHz effectively). The memory chips are made by Hynix and carry the model number H5GQ2H24MFR-R0C. They are specified to run at 1500 MHz (6000 MHz GDDR5 effective).

Nvidia’s specs require one 8-pin and one 6-pin power connector since the card’s TDP is 185W.

The GTX 680 SC SIG 2 card comes with DVI-I and DVI-D (dual-channel) outs, where only first one is analog VGA-out capable. EVGA made things easy by marking the VGA-capable out with “DVI-I”. The plastic caps are also a nice touch. The I/O panel also features standard HDMI and DisplayPort connectors. Nvidia wanted to make sure that it does not lag behind the competition in multi-display support, so Kepler based cards can run up to four displays simultaneously.

The air exhausts are somewhat bigger than on the reference card. This allows for better airflow, which means hot air will exit the card faster and in turn help the cooler perform a bit better although the cooler design doesn't really call for that.

GTX 680 SC SIG 2 graphics cards come with two SLI connectors, which means it’s possible to daisy chain up to four GTX 680 cards for some serious power.

We tried to overclock the EVGA GeForce GTX 680 SC SIG 2 with the Power Target set to the maximum of 125%. We let the fans in auto mode as increasing fan speed made no difference here. We only managed to increase the base GPU clock rate by 30 MHz (GPU clock is overclocked in incremental 10MHz steps), and the memory clock rate by 200MHz (GDDR5 effective 800MHz). This is not much overclocking for the GPU but bear in mind that the EVGA GTX 680 SC SIG 2’s GPU is factory overclocked by 92MHz. With the help of a decent memory overclock we got up to 5% better results.

Fan speed is PWM-regulated from about 1100 RPM to 4230 RPM (according to the PrecisionX monitoring tool). The GPU temperature is up to 76°C with the fans regulated automatically. Subjectively said the card remained quiet, we noticed only small changes in noise levels from inside of the closed PC case.

With the fans set at maximum speed the card is really loud but the GPU temperature is only 60°C.

GPU temperatures didn’t exceed 78ºC after overclocking.

Although it ticks at higher clocks, EVGA’s GTX 680 Superclocked Signature 2’s consumption isn’t noticeably higher than the reference GTX 680 and this is good considering up to 7% better performance of the EVGA card.

EVGA updated its GTX 680 Superclocked card with Signatre 2 cooler and jacked up the GPU clock, resulting in a new card, the GTX 680 Superclocked Signature 2. EVGA currently offers a total of 12 different GTX 680 cards, catering to a wide range of needs. The Signature 2 aims to address the need for a very quiet card.

The cooler is practically inaudible in idle, but even when the card is operating under heavy load, it tends to stay on the quiet side of things.

The only downside is the lack of additional overlocking potential. With a 30MHz GPU overclock and a 150MHz memory boost, we didn’t break any records, but the real world results are already good enough. Bear in mind that the GPU is factory overclocked by 92MHz, while the memory clock was upped by 50MHz. Memory overclocking is not very popular among Nvidia AIBs nowadays, so we applaud EVGA’s decision to go for a slight factory overclock.

The Signature 2 cooler can deliver lower noise emissions even on a demanding card such as the GTX 680. The card is widely available and in case if you want an overclocked and quiet GTX 680 we can recommend it. Currently the GTX 680 SC SIG 2 card is listed for about €443 and that is some €30 more that EVGA asks for the GTX 680 SC. It's not a huge premium, but we still feel that it could have been somewhat cheaper.

When it comes to factory overclocked GTX 680 cards, Point of View/TGT’s GTX 680 4GB Beast is definitely not the card to be ignored, as it comes with a hefty overclock and water cooling. Our today’s test will put the card through its paces, both solo and in SLI.

TGT tuning team made sure that the Beast moniker isn’t there for marketing alone and the clocks prove it. The GPU Base clock stands at 1137MHz; boost clock is 1202MHz while the 4GB of GDDR5 memory runs at 1603MHz (6412MHz effectively).

Note that reference GTX 680 cards come with a 1006MHz Base clock for the GPU and Boost clock of 1058MHz. Also, the reference card comes with 2GB of GDDR5 running at 1502MHz (6008MHz effectively).

The factory overclock suggests that the GTX 680 4GB Beast should do very well against the competition, but it’s the water cooling that makes this card really special. TGT opted for AquagraFX water block made by Aqua Computer, a company that has won many awards with its products.

Before we move on with our testing, we should inform our readers of the changes TGT did on the card. The GTX 680 4GB Beast Watercooled launched more than a month ago, but back then it ran at lower clocks. The main difference between the new card and the earlier launched GTX 680 Beast Watercooled Edition 4GB is in the factory overclock. The new GTX 680 Beast 4GB uses Low Leakage Selection chips that TGT claims made the higher clocks possible. The new card has a Base GPU clock at 1137MHz, while the earlier one ran at Base GPU clock of 1111MHz. Users should not worry about whether they’ll buy the new card, because the company’s retail channels already carry the new card only. That the card is a new model is clear from the ‘Low Leakage’ sign highlighted on the box.

The box is tough, with a design along the lines of PoV/TGT’s earlier designs. That the GTX 680 Beast card is a newer model is clear from the ‘Low Leakage Selection’ sign highlighted on the box.

The water block used by PoV/TGT is made by Aqua Computer and can be purchased separately. The block comes with a laser etched TGT Tuning logo. The block covers the GPU, memory and low profile power components.

The card is 255mm long, just like the reference card. However, it’s taller than the reference solution due to water block connectors. The card is 134mm tall ant the highest point and weighs in at 1155g (1575g gross weight).

The card comes with two barbs for 10mmx8mm hosing. It is powered via one 8-pin and one 6-pin power connectors. Point of View / TGT used five phase PWM design, one phase more than on the reference card.

Aqua Computer’s block packs a nice punch, mostly due to the specific design of the part above the GPU. This critical area, where water picks up the heat from the GPU, was designed with maximum dissipation in mind and, as you can see, is not flat.

The memory on the back of the PCB is bared and the card has 16 memory modules. The memory chips come from Hynix (model No: H5GQ2H24MFR-R0C) and are rated at 1500MHz (6000MHz GDDR5 effectively).

The card has two SLI connectors, which means Quad GPU is possible.

The I/O panel is identical to those we’ve seen on air-cooled PoV/TGT GTX 680 cards. There are two dual-link DVIs and standard HDMI and DisplayPort outs. Nvidia made sure not to lag behind the competition so Kepler based cards can run up to four displays simultaneously.

For our testing, we used Aqua Computer’s triple slot radiator with three 12cm Airstream fans combined with Eheim HPPS 12V water pump. We’re talking about fans that run at constant 1200RPM, but are inaudible. In fact, our results showed that they’re a great match with large radiators.

We had two GTX 680 4GB Beast cards on our test. We overclocked each of the cards individually and then in SLI.

Firstly, we noticed that although the cards are the same, they don’t have the same Boost potential. This clearly shows that two identical GK104 don’t have to overclock the same, despite working in the same environment. One GPU ended up auto-overclocked some 45MHz higher than the other. The difference is so drastic that we occasionally recorded as much as 2 percent performance difference.

GPU 1

GPU 2

Overclocking was good but we must say we expected more from watercooled GTX 680 cards. We think that GPU voltage turned out to be the limiting factor, since we couldn’t increase it beyond 1.1750V. Both cards’ GPUs ran stable at beyond 1320MHz (Base clock 1217MHz). The memory handled a 400MHz overclock but the GPU refused to budge further without voltage changes, despite the low temperatures. Memory overclock didn't lag behind either and we managed to squeeze out another 200MHz (800MHz efectively) from it.

Temperatures idle

We decided to make use of the summer heat in Austria for our testing. This morning, the temperature was at 29°C but the forecast said it will go up to 35°C during the day. Well, not particularly comfortable, but it’s definitely a great chance to sweat our GTX 680 Beast Watercooled SLI system.

In idle mode and at 29°C room temperature, the GPUs ran at 29°C as well. It’s clear that watercooling temperatures can’t be lower than the room ones, but the good thing is that they’re not above either.

Temperatures load

After 45 minutes of playing Crysis 2 at 2560x1600 with all the effects on and with room temperature at 31°C, GPU temperatures climbed up to about 50°C. This is a great result for a card with such a high overclock, even before considering the difficult testing conditions. So, when it comes to reliability, this SLI setup definitely has what it takes.

SLI load temperature

Testing a single GTX 680 4GB Watercooled graphics card resulted in about 44°C.

Single card load temperaure

Power Consumption

The Point of View / TGT GTX 680 4GB Beast Watercooled most certainly ranks among the best cards on the market. AquagraFX water cooling provides excellent thermals and more than compensates for the high factory overclock. The card’s GPU is 131MHz faster than the reference card while the 4GB of GDDR5 were overclocked by 101MHz (404MHz effectively). Of course, this performance doesn't come cheap and Point of View/TGT priced the card at €774. This is almost €300 higher than the most affordable GTX 680 with 2GB.

If the price alone was the deciding factor, the card probably wouldn’t fare particularly well overall. However, we're talking about a product that aimed high, rather than target price/performance sweetspots. Ultimatey, the card is a special model, and a quite charming one, and as such shouldn't have trouble reaching its target group, however small it may be.

Our testing also included SLI performance and it was a sweet experience. Most users will find a single Beast to be more affordable yet powerful enough option, and TGT made sure that the experience mirrors the title of a top card in its class. The company used Low Leakage chips, by meticulous selection of best of the best GPUs for their cards.

Although the Beast comes factory overclocked by 133MHz, we managed to overclock it by another 70MHz. The GPU refused to go further without overvolting, despite excellent thermals.

The GTX 680 4GB Beast Watercooled is faster than any GTX 680 we’ve had here, hands down. The card scored up to 14 percent higher than the reference GTX 680. The Beast’s SLI scaling is dangerously approaching full throttle and those who can afford it are in for some serious, polygon munching fun, especially since the setup beats reference SLI by up to 14 percent. By now it’s clear that the Beast is not for the faint of heart, or wallet for that matter, but PoV/TGT isn’t exactly your average budget brand either. It all boils down to a single question - you want muscle and thermals without compromise? Then get a load of the GTX 680 4B Beast Watercooled.

Point of View / TGT is locked and loaded with its new GTX 680 Beast Watercooled Edition 4GB graphics card. The main difference between this card and the earlier launched GTX 680 Beast Watercooled Edition 4GB is in the factory overclock. Users should not worry about whether they’ll buy the new card, because the company’s retail channels already carry the new card only. That the card is a new model is clear from the ‘Low Leakage’ sign highlighted on the box. Low Leakage means that PoV/TGT handpicked the crème of the crop GPUs that can handle higher clocks.

GTX 680 Beast 4GB (Low Leakage Selection) has a Base GPU clock at 1137MHz, while the earlier GTX 680 Beast 4GB ran at Base GPU clock of 1111MHz. The Low Leakage Selection’s Boost clock is 1229MHz, which is 92MHz higher than the Base clock. The “regular” Beast’s Boost clock is 1176MHz, which his 65MHz higher than the Base Clock.

It’s not only the GPU clocks that are responsible for superior performance. Namely, the Low Leakage card comes with overclocked memory, which wasn’t the case with the previous model. The memory comes overclocked by 101MHz (404MHz effectively). We must admit we liked the memory overclock because most users will never overclock it, despite the obvious performance gains in many games.

The graph below shows that while playing AvP at 2560x1600 with 4xAA and 16AF, the maximum Boost clock was at constant 1267MHz.

The water block used by PoV/TGT is AquagraFX. It is made by Aqua Computer and can be purchased separately.

The I/O panel is identical to those we’ve seen on air-cooled PoV/TGT cards. There are two dual-link DVIs and standard HDMI and DisplayPort outs. The card is powered via one 8-pin and one 6-pin power connectors.

Part of the memory is on the back of the card, which is bare and has no heatsink or backplate.

GTX 680 Beast 4GB was cooled via Aqua Computer’s three-fan radiator. The first results we got show that the low GPU temperatures (maximum of 44°C in AvP) worked great for the Boost clocks, which were maxed out and in turn brought performance gains. We received two GTX 680 Beast 4GB cards so we’ll soon have some SLI results for you as well. We’ll also have some numbers on how overclocking friendly the Low Leakage GPUs are.

If the preliminary figures are anything to go by, we’re looking at the fastest and quietest GTX 680 we’ve tested so far. Anyways, we’ll have the full review up soon, so stay tuned.

We've been anxious to get our mitts on EVGA's GTX 680 SC Signature 2 graphics card as this is the company's first dual fan GTX 680. The card isn’t much faster than the original GTX 680 SC Signature, i.e. 1097MHz vs. 1084MHz GPU and 1552MHz vs. 1552MHz memory, but the new cooler means a quieter card that overclocks better. Good news however is that the new card is priced the same as the original GTX 680 Signature - $519.99.

The following two photos show our temperature measurements – first up is the GTX 680 SC Signature 2, followed by GTX 680 SC Signature. The difference of 3°C says enough really, especially since the cooler was almost inaudible. The two fans don’t go over 2040RPM, while the Signature’s single fan reached 2400RPM.

EVGA GTX 680 SC Signature 2

EVGA GTX 680 SC Signature

Unfortunately, we’ve sent the GTX 680 SC Signature back to EVGA and we couldn’t compare the results to those of the Signature 2, since the 304.79 driver we used for the latter card give better results. Users shouldn’t expect any major differences in performance of the two Signature cards, because they’re similarly clocked. We’ll soon see whether two fan cooling helps with overclocking so stay tuned.

Hot on the heels of EVGA GTX 680 Classified 4GB review, we now got a chance to take Point of View /TGT’s GTX 680 Charged 4GB card out for a spin. As far as specs go, the cards are identical, but it’s quite clear that both companies are gunning for different segments.

The difference can be seen straight away – the PCB and cooling are definitely not from the same source. The GTX 680 Classified comes with dual-slot cooling, which allows for a Quad SLI setup, although its cooling is noticeably weaker than the Ultra Charged’s triple-slot cooling. On the other hand, the Classified boasts 14+3 VRM design, whereas the Charged has a 5+2 VRM design. Note however that EVGA aimed its card at overclockers, who will use LN2 and eVBotovervolting devices.The Ultra Charged was made for enthusiasts who crave maximum silence and performance straight out of the box. It’s worth noting that PoV/TGT has an even faster GTX 680 – the Beast, but it comes with 2GB of memory.

So, the GTX 680 Charged’s base GPU clock stands at 1111MHz (Boost clock at 1176MHz) while the memory is at 1502MHz (6008MHz effectively). The cooler is three slots wide, but its three fans do a great job and still keep the card quiet.

The preliminary tests we ran positioned the PoV/TGT GTX 680 Charged 4GB above the Classified 4GB. We’ll thoroughly examine just why is that so in the full review. It may be due to more uniform maximum boost clocks or simply striking lucky with the GPU. Still, if we’re to pick right now, we’d say it’s the GPU thermals, which are 7°C lower than on EVGA’s GTX 680 Classified.

The GTX 680 Charged 4GB currently goes for about €550, here, which is some €100 cheaper than the Classified goes for.